The attachment of the jet engines of the Antonov An-72 family is quite unusual: they are placed in front of and on top of the wings. Hence, the exhaust gases flow over the wings, increasing their lift and giving the tactical transport airplane a short take-off and landing performance. The Coaler, the NATO reporting name, has high mounted, swept wings with a significant anhedral outside the nacelles. The aircraft has tandem, single wheel main gears, that retract sideways in pods along the fuselage. The nose gear has regular double wheels, so side-by-side, and retracts forward. Being mainly developed as a military transport airplane, the An-72 has a rear fuselage that slopes up and has a loading ramp. The fuselage ends curved up and in a rather pointed tail cone. Above is a T-tail without dorsal fin, but with a pointed bullet fairing around the horizontal stabiliser attachment. 

The different versions of the Antonov An-71/72/74 family can be distinguished by looking at

• the shape of the nose
• the length of the fuselage
• the wing span
• the type of main cabin door
• the presence of a gun at the front of the right main gear pod
• the presence of blister observation windows
• the configuration and number of the cabin windows
• the presence of a disk shaped radome on top of the vertical stabiliser
• the presence of ventral fins
• the shape of the tailcone
• the location of the horizontal stabilisers
• the presence of an emergency exit in the right front fuselage
• the presence of an air stair main cabin door

The prototypes of the An-72 are distin­guished from the production versions by the length of the fuselage, the wing span and the shape of the nose. The differences in length is quite small (about 1.5 m), so difficult to observe. The wing span is of the prototypes is about 6 m less than on the production aircraft, so easier to see. Also, there is no bend in the leading and trailing edge of wings. The nose cone and the cockpit windows nearly form a straight line, and the nose is visibly shorter than later versions. For the rest, the general description above applies. The main cabin door hinges to the left and is entered via a ladder.

Only the first prototype was originally equipped with two ventral fins outside of the cargo doors, and an air brake in the blunt tail cone, like on the BAe146 and Fokker F28.

While the An-72 prototype has a shorter fuselage than the eventual production aircraft, the winder wing span and the shorter nose are more obvious. (photo: Steve Fitzgerald/WikiMedia)

To make the An-72 suitable for Aeroflot service, it needed a higher payload. Hence, the prototypes were significantly modified: the fuselage was stretched by nearly 1.5 metres, in front of the wings, and the wings received a 6 metre wider span. They now feature a bend in the leading and training edge, more pronounced in the trailing edge than the leading edge. Finally, the nose cone was made longer as well, and now there is a more visible bend in the line from the cockpit windows to the tip of the nose.

In military service, the basic transport version was simply known as An-72, with NATO reporting name 'Coaler-C'. An executive version was designated An-72S, but externally it is not different. The same applies to demilitarised An-72s, that are known as An-72-100 and -100D for the cargo and VIP version respectively. 

Although the designation An-74 was first reserved for the polar variant (see below), later it was used for all the newly built civil versions of the family. Of these, An-74T-100 and -200 are the pure cargo transport versions, the -100 with a crew of four and the -200 with a crew of two. Externally they are not different from the An-72(S) and An-72-100(D), nor mutually.

From this angle you can observe the revised wing shape of the production An-72s: they have new outer wings with a different sweep angle for the leading and trailing edge. (photo: Dmitry Zherdin/WikiMedia)

There is even a variant of the An-72 with offensive capabilities, mostly called An-72P, but sometimes also referred to as An-76. It has a pylon under each wing to store for example unguided missile pods. Also, the An-72P has a gun pod attached to the front of the right main gear fairing.

The An-72P shows its 'teeth', consiting of underwing pylons with a pod of unguides missles, and a gun attached to the front of the right main gear fairing. (photo: Fedor Leukhin/WikiMedia)

The proposed electronic intelligence version of the An-72 has large antennas in box-shaped fairings along the sides of the fuselage, from the wings up to the tail. No production aircraft were built, only a prototype.

Originally designated An-72A, the name An‑74 was dedicated to the special version of the An-72 that could operate in the polar regions. It can land on skis, has different systems and a larger fuel capacity. Externally, the An-74 can be recognised by the blister observation windows on the left side, one next to the cabin door and one above the front of the main gear fairing. Also, the first An-74s had a longer nose than usual, with a bend in the lower curvature.

The An-74, in its natural environment, the polar ice. Note the protruding observation windows and the longer nose than on standard An-72s. (photo: M. Meerman/WikiMedia)

All these are convertible cargo/pax versions of the An-74T, although it is likely that the An-74TK-200D (An-74D) VIP variant will be fitted out like that. The An-74TK-100 and -200 have a four and two person crew as on the An-74T-100 and -200. All are easy to distinguish from other variants, because they have more cabin windows along each side, an air stair door hinging downward with built-in steps instead of the left hinging door, and a rear cargo ramp featuring steps for passenger boarding as well. Additionally, the variants have a medium-size front door on the right side of the aircraft, and emergency exits on both sides of the aircraft near the cargo ramp.

The last version described here only looks like the An-72/An-74 from the tail forward. The An-71, NATO reporting name 'Madcap', has a radar disk on top of the forward swept vertical stabiliser. The horizontal stabilisers are attached to the rear fuselage and have significant dihedral.  

The front of this airplane is clearly of an An-72, but the rear of the An-71 is highly different with its regular empenage and large radar disk on top of the vertical tail. (photo: VargaA/WikiMedia)